Monday, June 7, 2010

54mm Waiteri tribe: Shaman and sabertooth totem

This is one of those rare figures where everything turned out exactly as I expected. I love this figure. I'm also happy because this was supposed to be the most difficult figure out of the tribe. He took exactly 65 minutes, 30 seconds to paint and add static grass; I know, because I listened to a Count Basie CD while painting this figure, and tapped off the excess static grass just as the last song ended.

He's not completely finished: I'm waiting for the PVA glue to dry under the static grass before I add a few patches of lighter arid grass and some grass tufts.

The Waiteri shaman paints his body in sacred paint made from masticated charcoal. The sacred paint allows him to cross over into the spirit world. He leaves parts of his body unpainted so that he can keep a foothold in the mortal world. Here, he's doing the dance of the sabertooth to instill the predator's spirit in all of the tribesmen before the coming hunt.

5 comments:

That is one of the finest minis I´ve seen. The pose and the painting... It has a true feeling of shamanism :) Cant believe you painted that in one hour. You seem to have a gift and a true knowledge of how to use colors. It shows on all your works! Amazing...

this stuff is great. I wish you would have molded them first and sold them. I would love to do the same thing. And your execution is fantastic.

I would tell you to be careful about the naughty bits. If you are going to do them, make sure you represent them right. The shaman(and the others) look like they are circumcised. And unless you do a surgeon/moile(sp?) figure, you may need to reassess. Its a little detail, but important if you are gonna have it right. Look at some classical/rennaissance sculpture to see what I mean.

Thanks, Ken- Yeah, I can't sell these sculpts because the rights of the figures upon which I added belong to Bronze Age Miniatures. And, anyway, part of my intent was to make one-of-a-kind figures for myself.

I also did them to hopefully inspire others to make their own tribes. One of these days, I'll learn to sculpt the human form, then I can start selling.

Yes, circumcised :) You're right, and this is a byproduct of my lack of skill (go figure, some things are easier than others for me to sculpt.) Not to say I can't revisit those tribe members (pun) for re-sculpting ... or I can leave them circumcised- the practice had to start somewhere.

I think maybe a feral surgeon/medicine man fig crouching with a stone knife and a stone bowl in his hand would be a riot. and horribly frightening as well.'Don't let the medicine man get in base contact or he'll do subdual damage then start cutting!'

Just an observation BTW. I have loved your stuff. I love this stuff especially. and I think you are to hard on yourself. You are a great sculptor. Hell dressin dollies is one of the hardest parts of it.

I also enjoy your descriptions of going to KC and going to Table Top. Its amusing. I have known Phil for a while. He was very good friends in the old days(before his shop) with my Bro-in-law.